ChickBot micro:bit coming soon

We’ve got some big orders out the door for the day job and had some time to work on the next phase of projects. Most importantly, we’ve got the ChickBot micro:bit alpha PCB’s back and the first one built & programmed.

It allows the control of two motors forward & back, access to P0 and P1 for whatever you need (mostly analog things in, like line sensors, but who knows what you’ll dream up as they could just as easily control an output), we slave out the A & B buttons so they could have switches on them for something like bumpers or similar. Plus we’ve put a jumper in to provide access to a piezo buzzer so you can play tunes when programming with TouchDevelop or Python. Alternatively, you can use the P0 output to connect to our speaker accessory to play music in the Block Editor.

This is the design that line followed its way to victory at the recent Institute of Engineering & Technology Robotics Triathlon in Derby, so we know it’s a champion right from the off.

Here’s a sneak preview of it in action and my trendy old man’s slippers:

It will need a week for us to tidy up a few loose ends and then we’ll get some kits out to our testers. There will need to be a PCB revision but everyone who’s asked about a ChickBot micro:bit can be assured that they will be ready by then end of term so that planning for this September can take place.